Visitors to a web page will work out whether or not they like it in 50 milliseconds, according to new research.

According to Nature.com, boffins at Carleton University in Ottawa tested web page visitors to see how users made snap decisions about web page quality.

Gitte Lindgaard, who did the research, was surprised that the brain was making flash judgements about web pages almost as fast as the eye was taking in the information.

The research which was published in the journal Behaviour and Information Technology found that impressions were made in the first 50 milliseconds of viewing.

Volunteers were presented volunteers with the briefest glimpses of web pages previously rated as being either easy on the eye or particularly jarring, and asked them to rate the websites on a sliding scale of visual appeal.

The volunteers were able to spot the nice looking web pages from the rougher ones even though the images flashed up for only 50 milliseconds.